


I wanna be loved

by BeethllBug



Series: Inspired [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 23:07:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2168739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeethllBug/pseuds/BeethllBug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has a hard time understanding what Cas wants. Kevin wears noise-cancelling head phones. Sam makes a bitch-face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I wanna be loved

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely inspired by "Oh Glory", "I Wanna Be Free," and "Turn Off the Lights" by Panic! at the Disco

Sam awoke to yelling…again. He ambled out to the kitchen and found Kevin with his large noise-cancelling headphones on, and his head buried under his arms. Sam started the coffee and then sat across from Kevin, tapping him on the shoulder. He slipped his head phones off and groaned before letting out an audible sigh and letting his head crash onto the table again.

“How long have they been at it?” Sam mumbled, still rubbing sleep out of his eyes. Kevin took a deep breath, looked at his watch, and then sighed again.

“Almost an hour now, surprised you slept through Dean throwing stuff at the walls.” Kevin finally looked up at Sam. He always appeared tired, but Sam would consider his current state to be dead tired. “I’m glad Cas stayed and all, but I’m going to turn homicidal if this goes on,” They both jumped when a door slammed in the upstairs hall, “or suicidal.” Kevin whispered his final sentence just as more yelling commenced at the top of the stairs.

“Well fuck you too, Cas.” They heard Dean shout in his deep timbre, accompanied with a sharp bang, assumedly from him punching a wall. Kevin put his headphones back on before pouring himself coffee and retreating into the library. Sam listened to Dean stomping towards the kitchen and decided he should get coffee before having to deal with his older brother.

Dean was stopped in the room adjacent to the kitchen. Sam gave him a few quiet moments to overcome the worst of his anger before going in to calm him down. When he did finally go in, he had expected at least one bottle of whiskey to be out, but instead he saw Dean with his short hair clamped between his fingers and his forehead pressed against the wall. Sam hadn’t seen his brother drown in his sorrow without simultaneously drowning in alcohol in quite some time; he didn’t know if the quiet, brooding, and angry Dean that was using the wall as support was any better. At least drunk Dean would eventually work out the issue or rant to Sam about it until he settled on a solution. Quiet Dean was kind of scary.

“Dean?” Sam tried to sound supportive but his voice gave away the apprehension he was feeling. Dean smacked his hand flat on the wall, producing a loud thump that made Sam flinch despite his decade of dealing with the surprising and supernatural.

“I’m going to the garage,” Dean grumbled as he turned to walk past his brother. Sam grabbed Dean’s forearm, completely encompassing it in his long fingers. Normally, Dean would have easily been able to escape his brother’s grip, but Sam was worried enough to use the full force of his superior muscle mass to hold Dean in the room with him.

“Sit down, Dean, talk to me,” Sam said gently, pointing towards a chair. Dean tried to stare him down despite his disadvantage in height. Sam sighed and pushed Dean towards the chair. “Sit. Your ass. In that chair. Now.” Dean backed into the seat but didn’t let up on his pissed-off expression. “No, Dean, I’m not letting you wallow around and break the bunker and bury your feelings just because Cas an’ you have hit a rough patch.” Dean just stared at him and blinked a few times, emanating contempt. “What did you do this time, Dean?” Sam asked, his exasperation clear in his tone.

“I didn’t.” Dean looked down at his hands.

“Okay. What didn’t you do then?” Sam raised his eyebrows, likely creating the ‘bitchface’ look that Dean was constantly harping on about.

“I don’t know what I didn’t do. He. Won’t. Tell me,” Dean huffed a short breath out of his nose, “Apparently, if he tells me what I’m not doing, so that I can do it, it will ‘diminish’ the ‘meaning’ behind my actions.” Dean had absorbed Cas’ affinity for air quotes recently and watching him mirror Cas in that way made Sam almost smile. “So, I’m doing the best that I fucking can, with what I’ve fucking got, but he just keeps telling me that he wants to be,” Dean paused to inhale and exhale slowly, sounding pained, “loved.” He pulled his hand down his face, obviously frustrated. After a few more slow breaths, Dean shook his head and gave Sam a pointed ‘now what’ expression. “Aren’t you going to do some magic, Cas translating, mumbo-jumbo, chick-flick, thing? I can’t have my a-ha, I understand now, moment unless you give me something I can understand. Come on man, I need to understand. I need to a-ha!” Dean looked nuts. Sam had just witnessed a near-complete spectrum of human emotion go across his brother’s face, and now it was frozen in a bug-eyed state with his eyebrows raised into the middle of his forehead.

“He just wants you to act like you love him.” Sam tried not to sound like he thought his brother was a giant idiot.

“I’ve made it pretty damn clear how much I love him.” Dean finally blinked again.

“Dean,” Sam put his hand on his forehead, he couldn’t believe he was having this conversation with his brother, “Dean,” he cleared his throat a little, “That late night ‘Pizza Man’ stuff that you think Kevin and I can’t hear you guys discuss…and act upon,” he paused to raise his eyebrows pointedly, “That isn’t love. It’s lust. You need to show him that you think of him more than as just a sex object.” Dean looked at him blankly, “I mean, like, what is something that Cas enjoys?”

“There’s this one thing that I do with my tong—“

“DEAN SERIOUSLY!”

“Okay, jeez.” Dean let out a quick breath through his nose again, “He, I mean, like, uhm,” Dean looked at the ceiling and rubbed his hands together, “He likes, like, animals. He wants a cat. We can’t, obviously, but he likes them. And guinea pigs. And rabbits. And cheeseburgers. Not an animal, duh, but he likes them. And his favorite color is this one shade of blue like, darker than royal blue, but not quite navy blue. It’s the color blue in a peacock feather. And water. He likes water. Fountains, rivers, lakes. He likes to watch the way water interacts with the things containing and influencing it; how water has no other choice than to just find its way around whatever obstacle has been thrown in its way. He could watch a river for hours. He has, actually. I fell asleep after a while, but he sat and watched it and his eyes did that crinkly thing at the corners that he does when he’s happy but so at peace that the rest of his face won’t move at all.” Dean shook his head and smiled down at his clasped hands. Sam couldn’t help but pop a small grin also. “Oh shut it,” Dean glared at his brother, but couldn’t keep the grin from his eyes as he looked back down.

“Sooooo, did you figure it out?” Sam asked.

“Yeah. I a-ha’d.” Dean sat up a little straighter and shook himself out.

“Good.” Sam got up and grabbed his coffee cup as he returned to the kitchen, giving Dean time to recover from their talk.

 

* * *

 

“Cas, come on man, unlock the door.” Sam and Kevin could hear Dean’s voice clearly from their seats in the library where they were hunched over books, pretending to read. “Cas, babe, plese let me in?” His voice had gotten quieter, more pleading, almost desperate, but it carried easily down the halls of the bunker. They heard a grouchy mumble of a retort from Cas, but with his door closed they couldn’t make out what he said. “Cas, come on, I have and idea, and I think you’ll like it.” They heard the door creak a little as it finally opened.

“What?” Cas said curtly.

“Do you wanna go to the zoo?” Dean’s voice took on an almost sing-song quality.

“The zoo?” Sam imagined that Cas was squinting his eyes as he replied to Dean.

“Yeah, uh, it’s a place with a bunch of animals from—“

“I know what a zoo is. I’m thousands of years old, Dean.” Sam didn’t like how grouchy Cas still sounded. The idea had seemed perfect when Dean had run it past him half an hour ago; Sam had forgotten how long it took Cas to process emotions, he would probably need more time to get over the earlier fight.

“I just thought you would like the zoo. There’s a petting zoo with goats, too.” Sam urged dean on in his head, hoping his brother would get to the best part before Cas tried to slam the door again. “And, you know, after, I was maybe thinking we could get dinner at this one place. Their burgers are the best in town, and we could eat outside by this little pond, and there’s always baby ducks this time of year.” Sam imagined Cas blinking a few times in quiet contemplation. Kevin called it Cas’ “loading” face.

“I’ll take your proposal into consideration.” Castiel closed the door with a quiet click. Kevin lifted his hand up to Sam for a quiet high-five before Dean came back down the stairs.


End file.
